Krampus: The Christmas Devil (DVD)
Foywonder
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Starring A.J. Leslie, Jay Dobyns, Paul Ferm, Bill Oberst, Jr.
Written and directed by Jason Hull
The first lump of coal of the holiday season has arrived, and its name is Krampus: The Christmas Devil.
It should come as no surprise that with Michael Dougherty’s Krampus set to hit theaters in a few weeks, Krampus would begin to make his presence felt in other aspects of b-movies or in this case, z-grade movies. As a matter of fact, I only watched this movie by mistake. I foolishly got it confused with Krampus: The Reckoning, another just-released Krampus flick. I don’t know if that Krampus film is any good, but I’m positive it cannot possibly be any worse. Turns out I was the one in for a reckoning either way.
I knew from the first opening moments that I was in for a long haul. The very first impression Krampus: The Christmas Devil gave me was this is not a b-movie or an indie – this is an amateur film just a few slight notches above home movie. Grainy shot-on-digital footage, pointless overuse of slow-motion and other editing tricks, go nowhere plot, endless scenes of talking heads engaging in roundtable discussions, some of the most eye-rolling fight choreography you’ll ever see, and the acting – oh, dear lord, the acting.
When Bill Oberst, Jr., appears towards the end, it’s like if Daniel Day-Lewis suddenly took the stage during a kindergarten play. He’s so far above the rest of the cast it’s not even funny.
Krampus barely appears in his own movie, and even when he does, he keeps his face hidden, appearing mainly as an unseen figure in a holiday hoodie winter gear… and with good reason; the hands I thought were just cheap gloves were actually cheap gloves masquerading as monster hands, and when we finally see Krampus’ demonic mug, it looks like it was bought at Party City around Halloween.
The movie opens with Krampus dragging a small boy in his sack through the snow, intent on tossing him into a frozen lake as punishment for whatever sin Saint Nicholas has deemed punishable by death. Krampus is very bad at his job because when he turns around to check his list for other names of children that deserve to be murdered, he fails to notice the kid crawl out of the ice and run for his life. The young boy appeared to be completely dry so even the icy water was bad at its job.
Flash forward thirty years and the young boy has grown up to be a police detective, married, with a teenage daughter of his own. He’s spent years obsessively investigating what happened to him as a kid as well as a slew of other missing children reports that he attributes to St. Nick’s Yuletide demon companion. Naturally, nobody believes him, least of all his boss. It’s like the worst episode of “Law and Order: Special Krampus Unit.”
Why does Krampus keep naked women chained up in his lair? I mean, besides the obvious answer that the filmmakers felt they needed some T&A to help sell the movie. A horny little devil in addition to punisher of naughty children? Bill Oberst, Jr., chugging milk with menacing glee comes across as more threatening than Krampus himself.
Even more evil than Krampus is Santa, a growling, scowling a-hole who screams at children and barks orders at Krampus. The guy playing Santa looks and sounds like more like one of the crab fishing captains from “The Deadliest Catch” than the man who brings toys and joy to the world on Christmas Eve. If he were an evil biker on a holiday special titled “Sleighs of Anarchy,” I’d be willing to buy into this take on the character.
I kept waiting for a plot twist revealing that this St. Nick was just some psychopath paired with a deformed gimp he forces to wear the Krampus outfit as part of their decades-long, tag-team, child-murdering spree. That would have been more believable than expecting me to believe that these two have any supernatural powers.
Neither scary, funny, nor fun, Krampus: The Christmas Devil proved a chore to sit through, a boring nothing of a movie that constantly dared me to fast forward or shut it off.
Running time: 82 minutes. Opening credits: 3-1/2 minutes. End credits: 9 minutes. All throughout there are countless scenes that feel like filler, other scenes that drag on, and, again, criminal use of random slow-motion. It seems even the people who made this one realized they barely had a movie and did anything to pad it out.
If you really want to punish someone for being naughty this holiday season, force them to watch Krampus: The Christmas Devil.
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Film
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